Spooky month continues with Syfy’s latest trailer for Channel Zero: Candle Cove, a new miniseries based on a popular old Creepypasta about an old non-existent television channel that convinced children to do scary, terrible things. Bit of advice: if you don’t like jump scares or the hair-raisingly dissonant noises that come with them, maybe you can go ahead and skip this trailer. Just a thought.
The show doesn’t follow a set of kids per se, but rather a man and his own memories surrounding the channel and its creepy-as-heck shows. Apparently nobody believes that the channel exists, as it would look like kids were just staring at television static. Very Poltergeist, no?
The man goes on to learn that these creepy shows and this channel may be connected to some terrible events that occurred when he was a child. Thus, mystery! And ghosts. And weird puppets. You know, par for the course for horror these days.
Blastr, whose parent company is Syfy, describes the show’s vibe as being similar to American Horror Story, and they’re pretty accurate (judging from the trailer, at least). My guess is that, given the subtitle and the overarching narrative thread of the television channel, this will be run similarly to AHS as well in that each “season” will be themed to different stories and channels.
Personally, I’m also seeing a few notes of Black Mirror and even Stranger Things. That being said, this show has plenty to enjoy that is unique to itself, which is to say that even I, a self-professed total wimp will probably be watching.
There’s something about its dark, creepy vibe that appeals to me in the same way that Black Mirror did when I first watched that show. I don’t expect this one to carry heavy lessons on our relationship with technology and each other, but who knows these days.
What’s especially interesting about this show is that it comes a few years after some girls stabbed one of their friends, nearly killing her. The stabbing was influenced by another popular online urban legend/meme/creepypasta inspiration, Slender Man. They believed that by killing the girl as a sacrifice, they’d become servants of Slender Man, and be allowed to live in his mansion in the forest. The victim lived and ultimately ended up recovering from her wounds, and the attackers were apprehended. The case is still currently in court.
This trailer alone carries links and references to that very same real life case: kids, skeletal figures, children appearing to be attacking or stabbing something in the middle of a forest clearing, it’s all there. Whether that’s intentional or not remains yet to be seen but the resemblances are a little bit uncanny.
What do you think? Will you be checking out the show when it comes out next week?
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